DLC ships as they exist, and as @HachiRoku has defined them, are definitely P2W. This is just MMO 101 and anyone who is honest would be forced to agree because they simply do not require the time investment that other ships do, admiralty bought, capped, or crafted, relative to their utility in the game.
The only way to begin to balance this in my opinion is to give the DLC ship purchaser a choice: 1) Redeem a DLC as a ship and it turns out 2/4 Shabby by default and is restricted from port battles; 2) Redeem your DLC as a permit to be crafted and it can be 3-5/5 with all possible bonuses + it can enter port battles as normal and be traded/sold/captured.
All things solved.

Absolutely not. I refuse to even review a game in Early Access. It obviates the need to hem and haw about the ethical obligations of providing a thumbs up/down review of something that is in the developer's definition "unfinished." You shouldn't even consider an award for a game that hasn't been "released" in my opinion.
We are "testers" and our feedback that we provide should be considered just that.. feedback.. in the service of creating a better final product.

I'm sure that the U.S. guys would hunt me mercilessly if they could see that it was me on their coastline instead of @William Death. Thus, skill and perception does matter and all of that is taken away by removing the ability to see and communicate with enemy players on the OW. Therefore, my potential PvP content is being denied by the current system.
See how that works?

Yup, this has been my contention since the names and OW communication were removed. This is down to basic player psychology about winning and feeling like a bad ass, not about individual player reputation. There may be only a handful of players in the game who people would actually fear and avoid fighting on the basis of their (perceived) skill, and @traitorous mctraitoro you are not one of them, sorry bud.
The stories that I've heard from clan mates and others, especially new players is that not being able to see names and communicate on the OW is only a detriment to actually engaging in non-gank fights. People are much less likely to jump into 1v1 or 1v2 fights if they don't know who/what they're getting into, than the other way around.
I think the perception that people are having more engagements because they are anonymous is purely a psychological crutch to explain how the RoE and dying server populations are interacting to elicit certain kinds of PvP. And if people are truly honest about the nature of playing a multiplayer, online game.. having in-game communication and reputations hamstrung by anonymization is a silly, unique aspect to Naval Action that is holding us back.

Yes. The design of those missions suck. The design of the PvP zone sucks. And the decline in the population post Patch 27 is a direct result of the choice to essentially force people to grind doubloons in those areas.
I’d argue that the large majority of PvP that players want in this game is split between asymmetric, non-consensual PvP (people want to feel like a pirate or a badass) and people who want a “good fight.” The missions and PvP zones accomplish neither of those things.
Getting new, casual, and more PvE-oriented players out of safe zones capping traders for the most limited resource in the game satisfies the asymmetric crowd, and does provide content across the spectrum of sheep, to sheep-doggers, to wolves, so that’s a net gain over the current situation.
Compare this to before where the most limiting item in the game was PvP marks, where those non-PvP’ers were forced into trading and buying these... This was honestly a more sustainable economic system, but this created no feedbacks for a good chunk of the PvP oriented players who were looking for asymmetric, nonconsensual fights because safe zones were the only place you could find the guys grinding for gold to buy PvP marks, etc. and this had a very negative impact on the bottom of the food chain.
In my opinion we need to hugely reduce any rewards in reinforcement zones (not eliminate them) by increasing tax rates and lowering doubloon drops inside them. Encourage people to get outside them once they have a sustainable nest egg. Second, institute meaningful, unique rewards for PvP that will continue to drive the economy.. I’d do this through the drop of cosmetics (paints and unique flags) and highly desirable crafting items like labor contracts (while increasing labor demands for higher rates of ships such that even at max rank labor contracts, not doubloons directly, are the limiting resource). Third, RvR has to be improved to more tightly focus PvP’ers and PvE’ers alike on some goal driven content. I’d go back to my 4-6 week, PvP/PvE theaters of War suggestion or some other mechanisms that make ports matter again to accomplish this. By giving active PvP’ers something to do that isn’t killing newbs, gnawing on the bare bones of the PvP zone, or spending mind numbing hours grinding ports (i.e. give us raids already) you’ll alleviate pressure on the bottom of the food chain and reduce the glaring lack of game content by upping player-driven interactions again.

How is it even possible you've got 3000 posts on the forum and have never done a hostility mission? Time for the U.S. to flip some ports guys!
Hostility missions are nothing like what "raids" should be. Hostility missions are a lazy mechanic that ultimately should disappear in my opinion. They take too much time to schedule a port battle, relative to the payoff involved. True, on-demand non-port-flipping but port-battle like events via the equivalent of "flag-pulling" should take their place. I've made plenty of posts about what those should or could look like in the past so I won't go on about it here.

This is a stupid suggestion and doesn’t deserve the time of day. We don’t fight in an MMO to fight nameless bots who we can’t interact with. We fight for reputation, for friends and frienemeies alike, and you don’t get that by removing player to player communication.
@admin neither of your nuclear options need be employed here. Just ignore it, implement your 1v1 PvP zones who want “good” fights and turn the rest of the gank zone battles into no-green free for all’s, where people will know exactly that no rules apply and all bets are off on being able to count on any other player.
Simple.

This is not an exploit in my opinion. You should hate the Patrol Zone (gank or be ganked zone), not the players in this instance.
In my opinion the Patrol Zone RoE should be converted to free for all battles. You’re only there to grind damage anyway right? Because literally no one should be going to Patrol Zones looking for “good” fights, that’s just dumb. There should be no green in these fights, and if you’re done fighting, just sail off and disengage like you would have in real life.
Anyone should be able to choose who and when they shoot, whenever.

VCO is a loose affiliation of privateers. We have the People's Shipline which has 5-10 crafting alts (though most of us and our alts are all Level 50 crafters anyway) that provide ships/repairs/cannons to whoever needs them, few questions asked. Line ships are a bit of an exception, where we currently ask for some doubloon contributions though that will probably change as they become more plentiful. Most of us who are rich donate the majority of any earnings we make in doubloons and resources directly to the clan, and those members that are still trying to level their crafting are provided resources out of the clan bank to craft whatever they need. We used to ask members to reserve a single Outpost for production of crafting materials and organize that across members so no one had to devote anything more than that, but that's almost not needed anymore as we lose so few ships, make enough money from ports to cover their costs, and are sitting on so many materials that most of us probably aren't even using all of our labor hours any more.
Basically, the clan provides for all, with a minimum of demands, within reason. Only people like @William Death, who has, shall we say... expensive and edge-case tastes, are required to fend for themselves for upgrades, dueling ships, etc. The People's Shipline keeps us in PvP-ready and port battle-ready ships.
We all pretty much do our own thing except when it comes time to PvP and do RvR. We have a few folks in the clan that call battles if needed, but most of us are vets, deal with comms in a superlative way which we enforce with an iron fist (almost to a person we are adults and act like it) and know each other well enough that battles are pretty quiet affairs. But voice comms are basically required for coordination of PvP and RvR. It's been this way since Early Access.